Young Flame

I wake up to pressure on my cheek. Opening my eyes, I find myself in the odd position of being poked. An ursu is sitting before me with a stick in its hand, poking me. I slap the stick away in irritation, looking closer I can tell it’s Barrett, or at least he has the same coloured hide as Barrett.

“You’re finally awake. Hurry and get up, we’re leaving.” Barrett says before rising to his feet. I push myself into a seated position amongst the remnant burning bed of embers and ash. I feel more refreshed than I have in ages. It was far too wasteful to sleep amongst smouldering coal, usually only ever done when someone was in critical health. But, having now done so, I'm invigorated.

I revel in the comfortable heat while I swallow some of the remaining coal while I can. If Barrett let me sleep in this coal bed of mine, they mustn’t have had too much issue with me using their coal, which is a relief. I hadn’t been paying attention to the possible consequences when I did what I did, I only cared about giving my family their proper send-off so that they could properly move on. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I let the opportunity pass should I not find another chance in the future. What I’m going to do now and where I am heading are not things I know.

“How long are you gonna sit there, girl? I told you we are going. Now hurry up and stop your flames so I can carry ya,” Barrett says.

I realise I have been ignoring him while lost in the comfortable heat. Doing as he asks, I retake control of my outer form and pull my flames back into a physical body. The moment I move out of the fire, Barrett drapes a large rag around my body and tosses me over his shoulder.

An indignant squeal escapes me as he holds me tight in the uncomfortable position. The ursu is quick on his feet and soon we are on the outskirts of the town. Before I know it, I’m dropped to the ground and my breath is knocked out of me. Tossing off the rag still covering me, I look up to see the trio who brought me here. Barrett is shaking his hand in pain for some reason, while the other two are watching him with apparent mirth.

It miffs me how blatant Barrett's disregard for my body is. This isn’t the first time he has handled me with such little care, and I can only hope that this will be the last. I move closer to Gerben, as I have learnt over the past week, he is the best of the three by far. Neither of the other two truly understand how much bigger and stronger they are than I when we interact, at least Gerben can be gentle.

Gerben approaches before briefly touching my shoulder with a finger and flinching away. As he shakes the hand that touched my shoulder, he asks, “kid, as funny as watching Barrett in pain can be, I need to ask you to try and cool down a bit.”

“Huh?” What is he talking about?

“You’re still too hot for me and I’ll need to carry you onto the train. Can you do that for me?” He says.

Oh, I thought it was okay as long as I wasn’t on fire, but they can’t even handle this much heat? Kinda weak of them honestly.

…I should probably not mention I thought that.

Well, if he needs me to lower my temperature, I can either reduce the heat on my consumed coal or increase my control. I haven’t improved at all since I was with my tribe, and I’m sure Uncle would be disappointed if I don’t continue to try and improve myself. Also, I really don’t want to give up the sated feeling of coal’s heat energising my body.

I bring the focus on my physical form to the forefront of my mind. I spread my awareness and force my focus to condense at the edge of my body. The parts of my form that touch the surrounding air, I exert my will and command them to cool down. The change occurs rather easily, dropping the heat of the outside of my body to a level the ursu should be able to manage. The warmth of my body inside this outer layer remains at the same heat, and I’m able to keep the coal burning within me.

It is when I try to move my form awareness to the back of my mind that I have trouble. Controlling my body while I have full focus on it has never been hard. The hard part comes in when I have to keep that change under control indefinitely. Keeping enough focus on my form while trying to do other things is near impossible for me. Only in the past few years have I gotten used to holding my physical form permanently, but even then, I have been dropping it on a few too many occasions.

Splitting my attention back on the ursu in front of me, I struggle to maintain my outer temperature. I can hold this for a while if I’m not distracted, but it will be too hard for me to hold for a prolonged period. It looks like I’ll have to settle with a lower burn and practice while we travel. I’m gonna miss the extra energy and warmth.

I motion to Gerben that I’m ready to be picked up, and once again on his shoulders, I lay eyes on the huge… thing that sits in front of us. It looks like a long connection of metal houses, but they sit on wheels rather than directly on the ground. Sweeping my head left, each metal box looks identical. Gerben carries me to the right towards a strange contraption. A large cylinder, similar but much bigger than the barrels at the saloon, is attached to wheels of its own. Two large tubes connect to the large barrel. One on top and one at the front, bending upwards.

“She’s a beaut, ain’t she,” Arthur declares. “Finest bit of ursu genius you’ll ever see.”

Uh, sure, but what is it? All it looks like is a huge waste of metal.

With me still secured to his shoulders, Gerben approaches the ursu waiting beside the odd wheeled cylinder.

“So, you ready to go?” the man asks, looking at Gerben.

“Yep, we appreciate the lift,” Gerben says.

“It’s no issue. Wouldn’t want ta make ya walk the entire way.” He glances up towards me. “Now your little bonfire there ain’t gonna start no fires on all that coal back there, will she?”

“No, she’ll restrain herself. Won’t you, kid?”

I nod twice. Stopping things from burning around me is easy. I’m not so bad in my control that I can’t do that.

“That’s good then. Welcome aboard my train.” The ursu says before jumping onto the tubular thing.

Gerben doesn’t wait a moment longer, lifting me off his shoulders, he raises me higher until I'm over the ledge of the first of the metal boxes. As I go over the top of it, I realise there is no roof, instead my leg land on a massive pile of coal. It is incredible, I’ve never seen so much coal in one place. The size of the fire this could make nearly makes me drool. Wait, is this why they told me not to make a fire? Cause they know how tempting it is? Maybe they won’t notice if I take one or two chunks, or a few more.

The huge open box of coal almost tips when Gerben, Arthur and Barrett climb their way over the side. I feel everything underneath me tilt to the side as they all clamber over the ledge at the same time.

“Oi! One at a time you lot! You’ll be the ones fixing the railcar if it tips,” the ursu from before yells.

Gerben shouts back an apology before he digs away some coal and settles down for a seat, with the other two following suit. Why are we sitting down here? Didn’t they say we were moving out?

I can smell burning coal. I look around to make sure it isn’t me causing it. A pillar of smoke rises from the tube poking out of the top of the contraption the other ursu climbed onto. Wait, no. Looking closer, I see the smoke is actually steam. More water? At least I have a wall of metal and coal between it and me.

A loud whistle cuts through the air as I feel the coal beneath me jerk forward.

“Ah!” I let out a startled yelp as I fall to the side.

I look around to find out what was going on. Is the earth collapsing again? I catch sight of the stone buildings over the edge as the world seems to settle under me once again. Everything is moving to the right. What? I stand and approach the edge of the large box. Everything is moving. The buildings, the ursu and even the ground are speeding up. Looking to the rear of the ‘train’ as the ursu before called it, I finally understand. It really is a 'train' of wagons, all hauling their load of coal and moving along the sand. I never would have imagined it could be possible for such an obviously heavy load to be mobile.

“Whoa,” I let out as the wind picks up along with the speed of the train, fluttering my clothing about my body. Leaning over the side, I see the wheels turning over a path of iron tracks I hadn’t noticed earlier.

“Yeah, it’s quite something, isn’t it?” Arthur says, looking smug as if he made the thing himself.

“You got your voice back,” Gerben states from the other side of the railcar to me.

“What? Oh, you’re right! Finally!” I cheer.

Now that I can finally communicate, I can ask everything I’ve been wanting to know about. What should I ask about first? The place we are going? Maybe their lives? Or maybe I should ask if they know about the Titan? Wait, no, there is still something much more relevant to ask.

“What is this thing?” I ask, looking over the edge again as the surroundings fly past us.

“I told ya. It’s a train. The best ursu creation in the past hundred years.” Arthur says.

So it’s something they made? I’m surprised a race of such insanely strong people even need to make something to pull their wagons. I can’t deny the speed of the thing, though. It moves along at the speed of a dingo despite its size. I’d hate to get caught in front of the thing.

“Now that you can speak, how about you tell us your name, we can’t go around calling you ‘girl’ forever, you know,” Gerben says.

“I’m Solvei,” I tell them. “From the Vatra tribe.”

“About them, your tribe, I mean. How did you lose them?” Gerben asks leaning forward with his back to the wall of the railcar.

“It was a monster,” I say. “A titanic beast bigger than anything I’d ever seen, bigger than mountains. It didn’t even notice us, but it destroyed everything. The earth broke open in fear of it. My… my tribe died when the ground we were hiding in collapsed around us.”

I take a moment to settle the choking feeling in my throat. My chest aches as I remember the events of that day. I hate thinking about what happened. I hate my naivete at the time. I saw them crushed with my eyes, I knew they were already gone when I went looking for them, but I couldn’t accept it. If I had accepted it earlier, if I had considered my options while I still could, I wouldn’t have fallen into that mindless grieving state I had.

Gerben continues before I can get too lost in my thoughts. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened to your leg?”

“Oh, it got stuck under a rock. I had to cut it off.”

It was comical to watch the typically stoic Gerben’s eyes widen. “That is… Incredible, but horrifying. I would find it near impossible to push myself to go through with it, even if I was stuck in such a situation.”

Arthur butt in too. “Yeah, girly, that’s some impressive balls you got.”

“Ah, no. My leg had already died and gone black, so I could barely feel it.” I try to wave off their praise. “Anyway, I should be able to grow it back as long as I can eat enough coal.”

Hint, hint. Please take the hint. I can’t help the small glance at all that precious stuff around me.

“Oh, you can do that? Is that what happened with your mouth?” Barrett says, bringing himself into the conversation.

I just nod, slightly confused as to his meaning. Of course? How else would I have been able to talk again?

“Back to the titan you saw. Could you describe it for me? We were sent out in this direction to investigate reports of it. What did you see?”

“Well, it was big, really big. And hot too, the ground melted all around where it walked. Even a week later the lava river it left behind was probably too hot even for me to cross. It looked like a crocodile, but it had large spines on its back that glowed with heat. Uh, what else should I say?”

“Where did it come from? Which direction did it go? Did it seem angered? Or was it aggressive? Anything else you can think of will help.” Gerben urges.

“It came from the ocean. We didn’t notice it until it was almost upon us cause there was a heavy mist. I didn’t see it, but when I escaped from underground, the path it left went north.” I say and Gerben nods along as if expecting such.

“Um, I don’t know if it was angry or aggressive, we were trying to hide at the time,” I say, trying to think of anything else about the monster, but coming up blank on anything that isn’t a way of calling it terrifying.

“You were trying to find it?” I ask. They said they were searching for it. Ursu look strong, but I don’t believe for a second that they’d live long around it. They’d probably burn up just in its proximity with how they struggle with the little heat I give off. That’s not to mention how far the titan has probably travelled by now, it’d be insane for them to try and follow it. Wait, do these trains need to follow the tracks laid out?

“No, we just needed to confirm the reports we received. We already came across the path it left in its wake before we found you. We couldn’t get close, though.” Gerben says.

“Do you know what that thing was?”

“This one in particular? No. I don’t know anything about it, but we have records of the Titans. Whenever they appear, chaos always follows. Always.”